The Rise of the Democracy

nt by Ar

e throne. Charles was an astute monarch who did not wish to be sent on his travels again, and consequently took care not to outrage the nation by any attempt upon the liberties of Parliament. Only by the Tudor method of using Parliament as the instrument of the royal will could James II. have accomplished the constitutional changes he had set his heart upon. In attempting to set up toleration for the Roman Catholic religion, and in openly appointing Roman Catholics to positions of importance, James II. set Parliament at defiance and range

y defining the limits of monarchy, and establishing constitutional government. It was not-this Revolution, of 1688-the first time Parliament had sanctioned the deposing of the King of England and the appointment of his successor,[65] but

he aristocracy saw England become a great power among the nations of the world, and the British Navy supreme over the navies of Europe; but it saw also an industrial population, untaught and uncared for, sink deeper and deeper into savagery and misery. For a time in the eighteenth century the farmer and the peasant were

the Lords also: these were the work of the aristocracy of the eighteenth century, and were attained by steps so gradual as to be almost imperceptible. No idea of democracy guided the process; yet our modern democratic system is firm-rooted upon the principles

Religiou

nconformists without consent of Parliament. Yet the Whig aristocracy which followed, while it did nothi

to the Bill of Rights, and passed into law in 1689. It stands as the last of the great charters of political li

ament. The people were assured of the right of the subject to petition the Crown, and of the free election of representatives in Parliament, and of full and

s for refusing to accept the accomplished fact, and acknowledge William III. as the lawful King of England. By making William King, to the exclusion of the children of James II., Parliament destroyed for all f

; but the decision was adhered to, and has remained in force ever since. The Mutiny Act, passed the same year, plac

function, and denied the right of the Catholic laity to hold, buy or inherit property, or to have their children educated abroad. The objection to Roman Catholics was that their loyalty to the Pope was an allegiance to a "foreign" ruler which prevented their being good citizens at home. Against this prejudice it was useless to point to what had been done by Englishmen

olution, Nonconformists and Catholics were no longer hanged or tortured for declining the ministrations of the Established Church, but still were penalised in many lesser

land long after toleration had been secured for Nonconformists. A

of Cabi

p was to secure that the Cabinet should represent the party with a majority in the House of Commons. Our present system of Cabinet rule, dependent on the will of the majority of the Commons, is found in full operation by the middle of the eighteenth century. The fact that William III., George I., and George II. were all foreigners necessitated the King's ministers using considerable powers. But George III. was English, and effected a revival in the personal power of the Kin

ely Whig. By 1710 the war had ceased to be popular, and the general election of that year sent back a strong Tory majority to the House of Commons, with the result that the Tory leaders, Harley (Earl of Oxford) and Henry St. John (Bolingbroke) took office. The Tories fell on the death of Anne, because their plot to place James (generally called the Chevalier or the old Pretender), the Queen's half-brother, on the throne was d

rule the country for nearly fifty years-until the restiveness of George III. broke up their dominion-and for more than twenty years of that period Walpole was Prime Minister. Cabinet government-that is, government by a small body of men, agreed upo

people. They were content to repeat the old cries of the Revolution, and to oppose all proposals of change. But they governed Engla

ole'

the whole tone of public life.[68] But he kept in touch with the middle classes, was honest personally, and had a large amount of tact and good sense. His power in the House of

he Whig houses by using the same corrupt methods that Walpole had employed. The "King's friends," as they were called

in the Ho

re Western type. The House of Lords stood in the way of the Commons when, in the Tory reaction of 1701, the Commons proposed to impeach Somers, the Whig Chancellor, a high-minded and skilful lawyer, "courteous and complaisant, humane and benevolent," for his share in the Second Partition Treaty of 1699, and this was the beginning of a bitter contest between the Tory Commons and the Whig Lords. An attempt was made by the Commons to impe

this majority has became enlarged out of all proportion. Liberal and Tory Prime Ministers were busy throughout the nineteenth century adding to the peerage-no less than 376 new peers were created between 1800 and 1907;

e increasingly democratic in character, the House of Lords, confined in the main to men of wealth and social importance, has become an enormous ass

was the theme of philosophers, and was to be seen expressed in the constitution of the revolted American colonies, and in the French Revolution, England remained under an aristocracy, governed first by Whigs, and then by Tories. It is true democracy was not without its spokesmen in England in the eighteenth century, b

s and

t of the trial made Wilkes a popular hero. Then, in 1764, the Government brought a new charge of blasphemy and libel, and Wilkes, expelled from the House of Commons, and condemned by the King's Bench, fled to France, and was promptly declared an outlaw. He returned, however, a year or two later, and while in prison was elected M.P. for Middlesex. The House of Commons, led by the Government, set the election aside, and riots for "Wilkes and Liberty" broke out in London. The question was: Had the House of Commons a right to exclude a member duly elected for a constituency?-the same question that was raised over Charles Bradlaugh, a man of very different character, in the Parliament of 1880. A

Government, and a determination of London citizens and Middlesex electors not to be brow-beaten by the Governmen